BEAUTY: ETERNITY'S GAZE IN THE MIRROR

Live Oak, March 28, 1999
Rev. Chuck Freeman

Way Yonder Past Function

There is a family legend about my great grandfather, Willie Oscar Mc Neese.

On a muggy Mississippi afternoon, he was working on his broken down car. W.O. (as they mercifully called him) got so frustrated that he grabbed his ball peen hammer and beat the hood of the vehicle, until it looked like it had been through a golf ball sized hail storm.

He liked his beer, so the moral of the story was to stay away from alcohol, and to watch your temper.

This is my calculator. A few Saturdays ago I was rushing to get to the bank before 1 p.m. to make a deposit, and get some cash. I pulled out my trusty calculator and I couldn't get it to work.

I talked with it, pleaded with it, and threatened it. I am partially named after good old W.O. My middle name is Willie (no its not William, and it is spelled with an ie).

Being a sensitive man of the 90's, not a beer drinker, and not in ownership of a ball peen hammer; I, in a very therapeutic fashion deliberately walked across the room and spiked the disobedient calculator into a box of trash I was preparing to deliver to the dumpster.

I rushed to Office Depot, grabbed a $5.99 replacement component, tabulated my deposit and got to the bank at 12:55 p.m.

Upon returning home I felt badly for my discarded calculator. I fished it out of the refuse, and determined to at least undo its six screws and see if I could find it a new battery.

I guess each of us has varying shades of Willie Oscar in us. We like things to work. It is very irritating when our machines fail. We place a high premium on function.

In our age of technology, it is often "cheaper" to throw something away than to repair it. I have an old VCR. When a tape got stuck in it the "fix it" man, said, "this is a well built machine. If it was a newer model I would recommend you buy another one, that would cost you less."

If money is our only consideration, these decisions are no brainers. But life is more than money and function isn't the only game in the cosmos. The soul offers other sensibilities. It craves beauty, form, and memory.

J.B. Jackson, a historian of landscapes, makes a wondrous observation in his essay, "The Necessity for Ruins." Things in decay, he writes, express a theology of birth, death, and redemption.

Dilapidated barns, old rusting farm equipment, and abandoned homesteads stand as graceful testaments that something of beauty remains long after its function has departed.

Their dignified and tangible relationship to one another, and to the nurturing of our human family through growing crops and meaningful labor, is a memory that is sacred.

Philosophers of the Renaissance period praised the three graces of life; Beauty, Restraint, and Pleasure. Our modern equivalent might be; technology, information, and communication.

If there is a slash in public funding in the schools or other civic spheres, art is the first to go. The implication is that we cannot live without technology or moralizing, but imagination and beauty are dispensable.

James Hillman maintains that our society suffers from a "beauty neurosis." The soul covets beauty, and when we pay little heed to this quality we can expect to see disturbances like depression, paranoia, meaninglessness, and addiction.

Beauty is arresting. It is vital to be taken out of the rush of practical life for the contemplation of timeless, eternal realities. What food is to the body, captivating, complex, and pleasing images are to the soul.

When purchasing an item for your home, a piece of clothing, or jewelry; is your decision based solely on cost? What about the quality of that which is bought? It's craftsmanship, or ability to invite reflection, or absorption?

On my 40th birthday I wanted to give myself an enduring gift. I was hurtin' for coins at the time. My parents had sent me some money, which I frankly needed to pay Austin utilities, and Ma Bell.

But, an inner imperative would not allow me to spend this money on such trivialities. I had found a necklace that expressed the attributes soul yearned for.

I purchased this necklace, which daily nourishes me. It is simple, noble, clean, and substantial. It only took a few months to catch up on my "necessary" bills. But, this adornment will be a guide for a long, long, time.

Even though my calculator doesn't inspire the nostalgia of the farm, or the attraction of my chain, it has still been with me and served me faithfully, for nigh unto ten years. I won't lie, if I cannot find a new battery for it, I will still end up throwing it away. But, not without a renewed appreciation for its intrinsic value, aside from it's usefulness.

Things suffer, as a person would, when they are reduced to their function. Beauty implores us to appreciate things less for what they can do, and more for what they are.

If my calculator is declared brain dead, at the very least it deserves a decent burial, and eulogy.

Oh Casio fx-82D. You have been with me through it all; moves, breakups, IRS preparations, countless check registers, and even financial distress. You have been as constant as the sun. You could have left me for a richer man, who would have been worthier perhaps of your talents. I pay homage to your unconditional acceptance. Your beauty goes way yonder past function. Thanks for how you have served me, but even more for who you are. May you find peace in that number crunching haven in the great beyond. Amen

Beauty Is Hard As Hell

Prettiness is easy. But beauty demands a more arduous process. Beauty is hard; hard as hell. These thoughts taken from Matthew Fox's book Original Blessing have richly informed my way of doing life for many years.

In the late 80's when I was considering leaving the Church of Christ I went and visited with the Director of M.D. Anderson's Clinical Pastoral Education Program.

The application had an entire essay question inquiring about my health. I asked John with sheepish shame; " I have ulcer disease. Do you think this will disqualify me from becoming a Chaplain?"

His answer anchors and sustains me even now. "It might just qualify you," he assured me. "You will be able to understand when a patient confides in you, Pastor, I have ulcers and they burn like hell."

Up until this moment I believed it was my prettiness that authorized me to be a minister. My goodness and perfection were what God demanded. God's people certainly expected no less. After all we are all only one unconfessed sin away from perdition.

In the decade plus since this encounter, I have stared long and often into the mirror of blemished beauty. Flawless prettiness isn't such a draw. I am no longer ashamed of the seven-inch scar on my abdomen from two stomach surgeries. I stroke it gently these days with tender loving kindness, and appreciation.

Real people in their often brutal struggles feed me. Like the woman who was in Shoal Creek Hospital a couple of years back with her third relapse for cocaine addiction.

I was facilitating a spirituality group in which she was making naked, no holds barred confessions. After a time I thanked her commenting, "I am impressed with your honesty."

Her eyes locked onto mine as she plainly spoke; "Well Chaplain, I have learned that you can't save your face, and your ass at the same time."

No truer word as ever been recorded in the volumes of the world's sacred scriptures.

For the better part of five years I have been leading bereavement groups with Hospice Austin. Scenarios like this are the norm; a 22 year old woman grieving her fiancée who was killed in a pedestrian accident, a teenage boy whose Dad committed suicide, or a 72 year old woman whose husband of 50 years is now gone.

Every session as I am driving home one unmistakable truth is resident within my breast; I have been in the midst of an affirmation of life. The myth of being pretty has been shattered. Yet, the ugly and gross beauty of reality is being mined. With all the passion a human soul can muster these pilgrims are crawling toward a broken beauty.

With the advent of each new season of the earth our community practices a Unitarian Universalist version of the Jewish Kaddish.

The Kaddish is a prayer said for the immediate family of the deceased, up to a year following the burial, on the anniversary of the death, and at special memorial services.

In this ritual we honor the lives of those who have deeply affected ours. In so doing, we embrace the hellish beauty of loving and losing.

Gibran reminds us of this arduous loveliness in his writings on beauty.

"The aggrieved and the injured say, 'Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory, she walks among us.

And the passionate say, 'Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like a tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.

And the tired and weary say, 'Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."

Things Reanimated

The funk of jilted love exposes us to regions of existence that are harsh and slippery. I have had many days when I seriously doubted I would be able to safely traverse this wasteland.

During my last major visit to this territory I happened upon a poem, "Listening to the Forest" by David Wagoner, which granted me profound consolation.

These lines are mind altering; "If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you."

He is so right on time I could sit down right now and you will have gotten your moneys worth. But, I guess I'll play out my hand.

The Renaissance navigators of the psyche coined a term, anima mundi, the soul of the world. It means basically what it says. Everything has the quality of soul. All things are alive. There is nothing, whether natural, or human made that is bereft of sacred character.

Due to our superior education we have advanced far from these nonsensical notions. Our cosmology has two categories. Humans and inanimate objects. That is to say beings with souls, and things without them.

I know I am oversimplifying, but give me some preacherly latitude here. The wild hairs among us will probably give animals their due in regard to a soul, but what about a bluebonnet, your hairbrush, or that computer keyboard you tickle so often.

If we believed in our hearts that things have soul, we couldn't govern them as conscious subject over inert object. Instead we would develop a mutual relationship of affection, respect, and care.

Our loneliness is lessened in a world that is alive with its own kind of soul than in a mechanical world, which must be perpetuated by advanced technology. A felt relationship to things wouldn't allow us to pollute or perpetuate unsightliness.

When I lived in Clear Lake I bought to very ugly gold chairs and an equally unappealing brown and gold love seat from one of the church members for $200.

Years later I gave this furniture to a friend of mine who had often witnessed me deriding them for their homely appearance.

When I delivered the pieces to her apartment, I sort of hung around beholding their countenance one last time. She thanked me then remarked; " I guess you are happy to get these ugly things off your hands?"

In a halting voice I replied, "You are going to take care of them, aren't you?" "What are you talking about?" she shouted with astonishment. "After all the put downs, you're gonna ask me that!" It hit me that these manifestations of wood and fabric had meant more to me than I had imagined.

I recall with great fondness the warmth and wisdom historic Rather House and the grand oak tree in it's yard bestowed upon me, when I officed there.

Even something as benign as a rock or stone can be a spiritual teacher of weighty significance. Jesus assured the first century Jerry Falwell's that if his disciples were silent in celebrating him, "the very stones would cry out." (Lk. 19:40)

Jesus spoke a good word there. The stone does have its own universal message.